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Together With:

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Hi there, 👋

An anonymous online bidder from Switzerland paid $28.9 million dollars for Mike Winkleman's (aka Beeple) first physical sculpture titled “Human One.”
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The piece is a 7-foot-tall column of LED screen showing an astronaut in an ever-changing dystopian landscape.
Winkleman calls Human One "the first portrait of a human born in the metaverse."
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He told WIRED:
​“I’m going to continue changing and updating the piece for the rest of my life."​
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​Something else to note:​
In 2021, NFTs made up 5.5% of contemporary art sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the world’s 2 leading auction houses.
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​In this issue:

• Startup lessons
• New wine investment platform
• Expanding alternative assets
• A $700 million exile

From the snippets: 4 virtual apes form a band, new crowdfunding regs, and US taxes.
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As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
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​P.S. Your comments make us smile, give us encouragement, and help us to improve this letter. Hit the feedback links at the bottom of the page and tell us what you think. Please...pretty please:)
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A Easy as Drinking It

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Cult Wines is a global fine wine portfolio management and investment company.
They launched their business in 2007, and currently have over CAN$340 million in assets under management.
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Now, Cult Wines has unveiled a new platform that "redefines how consumers invest in wine."
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The Cult Wine Investment platform turns the traditional investment playbook on its head by emphasising enjoyment and discovery of wine while making investing in it easier and more accessible than before.
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It's a simple 4 step process to build a customised portfolio of investment grade wine. By significantly lowering the investment threshold, anyone with a minimum CAN $12.5k to invest can create a wine portfolio.
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​Interesting fact: Over the last 15 years, the asset class has returned an average 13.6 percent annual return, beating out both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 over the same period.
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Cheers to that.
​Read more.
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Cleanup Pictures

We've been searching for a tool like this for a dog's age.
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​Cleanup Pictures is a free, open-source tool that lets you quickly retouch any image from a browser.
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​Use it to:

• Create clean backgrounds
• Remove unnecessary objects from image
• Edit out the ketchup stain on your shirt
• Retouch your selfies
• Polish your shoes
• Fill missing spaces in your YouTube thumbnails

Simply drop your image file to get started or play around with the examples on their site.

The results are magical.​
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​(We wish it would clean up our IRL editing desk).
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Together With MicroAcquire​
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💎 Acquiring SaaS Businesses

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​Every investment involves risk and SaaS acquisitions are no different.
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Skip due diligence and you expose your flanks – you might as well toss a coin and hope for the best.
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Do your research, however, and you’ll know what to acquire and when. Instead of pouring money down the drain, you’ll be planting the seeds of phenomenal growth.
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The three C’s of SaaS business viability- churn, code, customers - are the main areas to focus on before making an offer.
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No matter how much research you do, the fastest way to learn whether acquiring a business is a good idea is to talk to the founder directly.
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Download MicroAcquire’s ebook on how to assess SaaS businesses and learn the right questions to ask.
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As always, you can browse all seller listings with a free MicroAcquire buyer account. Upgrade to a Premium subscription to engage sellers and get access to more business metrics.
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🕵️ Free eBook: 3 Signs a SAAS Business Is Worth Acquiring​
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Startup Lessons

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​Dhruv Ghulati is the founder of Factmata, one of the first global startups to tackle online misinformation.
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Their AI technology extracts relevant claims, arguments and opinions, and identifies threatening, growing narratives about any issue, brand, or product.

But, the path to building a for-profit fact-checking company was paved with challenges.

Ghulati states:
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"In fact, building the tools we needed - including multiple browser extensions, website demos, a data labeling platform, a social news commenting platform and live real-time dashboards of our AI’s output - was akin to building several new startups all at the same time."

One of the biggest lessons they learned was just how little $1 million in seed funding goes in this space.

Factmata was founded in 2017, but Ghulati admits that it took several years to nail down their product-market fit. The company is on target for $1 million in recurring revenues by mid-2022, which indicates that they're closer to their ideal business model.
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Ghulati's article covers the important lessons he learned while building his startup, and what he thinks about the role of Government and emerging technologies in content moderation.
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​Read more.​
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The Unemployed Trader Who Became a $700 Million Exile

Sanjay Shah used an obscure loophole to go from unemployed trader to $700 million whale in just a few years. Now regulators are after him for what they consider the biggest tax heist in European history.​
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Jamboard

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Google has over 270 products, so we weren't surprised that we'd missed Jamboard.
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(Even Google’s own products page doesn't list all their products. Wikipedia does better).
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​Jamboard is a simple and free interactive whiteboard tool.​
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It doesn’t have the complete functionality of tools like Miro, but it offers all the core features you need for a brainstorming or planning session.
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​Here's how it works:

• Sign in with your Google account to create a blank board
• Add ideas with stickies, shapes, or text boxes
• From the tool palette, click on the image icon to add a picture
• Write or draw with a digital pen, marker, highlighter or brush
• When you’re done, download a PDF or a PNG (image) file. You can use the share button to share a link privately or publicly.

​Start your jam session.
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Expanding Alternative Assets

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Alternative asset investments are still seeing impressive growth.

We can tell that thanks to Alt raising a $75 million round last Thursday.
The market is obsessed with collectibles like high-value sports cards - which you might prefer to refer to as IRL NFTs.
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While Alt’s initial focus was sports cards, it has recently expanded to support other types of trading cards including gaming cards like Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh!
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In time, they’re looking to expand beyond cards and into other alternative assets.
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Alt founder Leore Avidar told TechCrunch:
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"Our goal is to be in things from sneakers, to watches, to NFTs."
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Meanwhile, the company is quietly exploring a new source of revenue: loaning users money, with loans backed by the cards said user has stored with Alt.
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Related: Will Alt Remain Alt After Funding? Elliot Silver takes a look at the off-brand domain name Alt currently uses and questions whether they will opt for an "alt - ernative brand name."
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Brought to You by Smash Digital​
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🦄 SEOs with Skin in the Game

​Smash Digital - a growth agency, filled to the brim with unicorn images and SEO memes. A team of SEOs with actual skin in the game, ranking their own portfolio of profitable businesses, and offering the exact same services to clients.

An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.​

​Check. Them. Out.
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✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way

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🔷 New rules create new opportunities: As new EU regulations come into effect, UK-based Crowdcube is aiming to become the first crowdfunding platform that would gain both pan-European and UK regulatory approvals. If they get there first, Crowdcube would be uniquely positioned to help more European companies raise funds from a collaborative investor base. Techeu.
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🔷 The public is now at risk: Today’s tech boom is different from the dot-com era’s own period of outlandish exuberance. After a long run of rich valuations and revenue-light companies being mostly constrained to the private market, we’re seeing more risk spill into the pockets of the investing public. It’s something to worry about.
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🔷 Four virtual apes formed a band: Universal Music is working with collector Jimmy McNelis to convert four of his NFTs into a band called Kingship. Kingship consists of four digital characters - three bored apes and one mutant ape - all part of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The club is one of the most successful NFT stories of the past year; it gave anyone who bought one of the apes full commercial rights to use the image.
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​🔷 Capital flows: 3Q21 was the second-best quarter ever for early-stage startups on AngelList in terms of positive activity. If you want the insights from an analysis of U.S. early-stage venture and startup spend, then it's all in this report (PDF). You'll get a comprehensive overview of how capital flowed into and out of startups in 3Q21, and what it means for the early-stage startup ecosystem.
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🔷 US Taxes: The Internal Revenue Service has announced annual inflation adjustments for tax year 2022, meaning new tax-rate schedules and tax tables, and cost-of-living adjustments for various tax breaks. You'll find an overview of the tax brackets, tax rates, standard deduction amounts, personal exemptions and the important links here.
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🚴 Cycling adventure:

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